Afterword: Reclaiming Psychoanalysis: Sherry Turkle in Conversation With the Editors

Abstract

In conversation with the editors, Turkle discusses the challenges and opportunities facing psychoanalysts today. She describes how people use digital life to flee what they find messy and complex in human conversation. She suggests that psychoanalysis has a special role to play in contemporary life in arguing for the importance of the capacity for boredom, solitude, and self-reflection. Whatever the practicalities of remote treatment, psychoanalysis needs to more embrace and understand more deeply the intimate conversational exchange that can only take place when people are bodies together. The afterword concludes by asserting that by reclaiming conversation, we can reclaim psychoanalysis.

Keywords:

• conversation
• digital
• psychoanalysis
• robot
• screen relations
• Skype, technology

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sherry Turkle

Sherry Turkle, PhD, is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and a graduate and affiliate member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. Most recently, she published the bestselling Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. Her other books include Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud’s French Revolution and a trilogy of studies of people and their relationships with technology: The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, and Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Among her awards and honors are Ms. Magazine “Woman of the Year,” a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Harvard Centennial Medal. She is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Todd Essig

Todd Essig, PhD, is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute. He has served on the Editorial Boards for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. For 16 years, until 2009, he was Director of The Psychoanalytic Connection (psychoanalysis.net), becoming widely known among colleagues as a pioneer in the innovative uses of information technologies for mental health professionals. He currently writes “Managing Mental Wealth” for Forbes where he covers the intersection of technology, public life, and private experience. His clinical practice is in New York City, where he treats individuals and couples, almost all of whom come to his office.

Gillian Isaacs Russell

Gillian Isaacs Russell, PhD, is UK-trained psychoanalyst who is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council and the British Psychotherapy Foundation. She has served on the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Psychotherapy, as Book Reviews Editor, and is now a member of the Reviewing Panel. Her book, Screen Relations: The Limits of Computer-Mediated Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, was published by Karnac Books in 2015. Dr Russell is internationally known as a lecturer, author, consultant, and researcher. She speaks and teaches on technology and its impact on intimate human relationships, particularly in psychotherapeutic treatment. She currently lives with her family in Boulder, Colorado.